West Fraser Timber, out of Vancouver, BC, announced Thursday it has entered into an agreement to acquire Alberta’s Manning Diversified Forest Products, which has sawmill operations located in Manning, AB, and related timber harvesting rights, to be completed before the end of October, 2015.
West Fraser plans to take the site’s lumber production to 130 million board feet by adjusting current operations and expanding annual production capacity.
The timber rights acquired have a current operational annual allowable harvest of approximately 440,000 cubic metres of coniferous timber.
Also based in Vancouver, BC, Canfor Corp announced Wednesday it will stop making lumber at its Canal Flats sawmill in British Columbia on November 9, due to a lack of roundwood and dwindling demand for softwood lumber, especially from the oil and gas industry. Canfor had already switched production in Canal Flats to a single shift at the start of May for the same reasons. This production cutback halved the number of people working at the sawmill from 160 to 80.
The Canal Flats sawmill, which has a capacity of 180m bdft when running two shifts, has been owned by Canfor since March 2012.
